Hailing Frequencies Open: Media Articles, Casting News, Scheduling

[starri]

And won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind.  And wrote I Am Legend.  And the forthcoming Dark Tower adaptation that everyone is excited about.

I'm not saying he's a particularly outstanding writer, but he's got some good movies on his resume too.

[xaxat]

On 10/27/2016 at 9:08 PM, Maverick said:

 This is going to be a trainwreck.  They pretty much lost me at 'another prequel', but the apparent disinterest in getting it developed says this isn't really a top priority.  But hey, they've got some not-so-snazzy turtle neck uniforms so maybe we should cut them some slack.

What makes all this news concerning to me is that the show is a priority.

It's the streaming service's first original content and, from the fact that episodes will be released on a monthly basis and won't be bingeable, it would seem to be a key part of driving the subscription base beyond those who want to watch old episodes of Blue Bloods. 

And they still are struggling to get it on air.

[paigow]

Star Trek: DOA...  Deadpool 2 will be in theaters before this show starts streaming.

[thuganomics85]

First casting news.... maybe.  According to Nicholas Meyer, "Michelle Yeoh is in it."  Hmm....

[jsbt]

Akiva Goldsman is an utter hack. I am really, really not encouraged by his presence within 100 miles of this project, as his is the type of prestige name contemporary CBS historically prefers - amped-up action, little brain and easily crowdpleasing. Let's not forget that CSI was the brainchild of Jerry Bruckheimer.

I hold out hope that either Fuller will return, or he's still reasonably involved or his proteges really do have active control. The casting of Michelle Yeoh, at least, is encouraging. But Bryan Fuller was the major selling point for me to come back to Trek. His last show (Hannibal) was a work of art, the finest thing on network television since Twin Peaks. And for him to come home to Trek after all these years with that artistry felt so right.

[DavidJSnyder]

More casting, Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp.

[starri]

I guess Rapp is the openly-gay cast member and probably also the gay character. 

[jsbt]

He is.

[thuganomics85]

Should have known they would get Doug Jones in here.  He's like to go to guy for playing some form of alien/vampire/really, anything in prosthetics.  Hopefully he'll be used better here compared to when he played Cochise in Falling Skies.

[mahree]

re: Doug Jones:  he'll always be Billy Butcherson to me :)

[jsbt]

Ugh.

[Lebanna]

1 hour ago, jsbt said:

Ugh.

Quote

CBS said it would see his “vision through,” but the writer confirms he has no active involvement with the series.

“I’m not involved in production, or postproduction, so I can only give them the material I’ve given them and hope that it is helpful for them. I’m curious to see what they do with it,” he says.

This is so ridiculously disappointing.

[jsbt]

I pretty much knew it was the case already, but it hurts to see it in print.

The silver lining for me is that this is his story, these are his characters and I suspect he has had a hand in the casting thus far. And he assembled a great creative team which is still involved. But it's not the same as having him in the center seat, and I pray that will change someday.

[TVSpectator]

On 12/2/2016 at 1:32 PM, jsbt said:

Ugh.

Yeah, I heard about this development. Pretty said, but hopefully, he will be at least partially involved with some of the creative decisions for this show.

[DavidJSnyder]

Sonequa Martin-Green is the lead. Also they've cast some Klingons.

[jsbt]

I adore her on TWD, so I'm very excited about that. I just wish Fuller was still involved.

[Lebanna]

Finally! She looks like a good choice, so this bodes well.

[Maverick]

 I hate to tell them, but they're using Vulcan naming conventions for the Klingons.   /TrekNerdAlert

[Kaoteek]

I can't say she made any sort of impression on me when she was on Once Upon A Time, and I don't watch TWD, so... eh, we'll see (which is about where i'm at re: the entire project, these days).

[paigow]

1 hour ago, Maverick said:

 I hate to tell them, but they're using Vulcan naming conventions for the Klingons.   /TrekNerdAlert

AAArrrggghhhh.....maybe they are typos

In space, no one can hear Negan scream

[SimoneS]

Was excited about Sonequa getting this role until I read that she will be a lt. commander. It totally sucks that the black Star Trek leads were not given the captain title from the start. Although I am not surprised since this is CBS, the least diverse network.

[jsbt]

They talked about this months ago. The character and show was deliberately conceived to follow the lower-rank officer and change up the focus - they wanted to focus on the regular Starfleet officer vs. the captain, who is usually the 'star'. I think it's innovative.

Edited December 15, 2016 by jsbt

[benteen]

Exactly.  Sonequa is playing the lead character of this show.  Now focusing the show around the Captain and instead the first officer is innovative and a sign that it's no longer business as usual with a Star Trek show.

[sarthaz]

I hope she has more chops than what she's shown on TWD.  She basically just stares and broods in every episode she's featured.  I know some of that is the writing, which has given her nothing to do but wander around with PTSD for like 3 seasons, but she's brought nothing interesting to the role.

[Kaoteek]

Yeah, that was also my problem with her on Once Upon A Time : even taking into account the writing (which didn't help at all), she didn't bring much to the part, and was very bland and forgettable.

[SVNBob]

On 12/14/2016 at 6:54 PM, Maverick said:

 I hate to tell them, but they're using Vulcan naming conventions for the Klingons.   /TrekNerdAlert

Well, the first of the three seems more Vulcan female than Klingon male, but the second sounds perfectly Klingon to me.  As for the third, it seems to fit with female Klingon names we've heard before (the Duras sisters), but could be Vulcan...or Romulan....

[Helena Dax]

Wow, Sarek's going to be there! James Frain is playing him.

[Lebanna]

Bad news - the show is delayed again and there's now no airdate for the show listed.

http://tvline.com/2017/01/18/star-trek-discovery-delayed-premiere-date-cbs-all-access/

Good news - the show starts production next week. So it is happening. And as mentioned above, Sarek will be in it!

http://tvline.com/2017/01/18/star-trek-discovery-james-frain-spocks-father-dad/#comment-list-wrapper

Delayed shows don't always turn out badly, there's no reason to panic (Westworld is an example of a much delayed show which turned out brilliant) so I'm not overly worried.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Lebanna

[starri]

A few quick hits, but with sets built, props and costumes made, and what appears to be a much improved model of Discovery itself.

ETA:  Canadian actress Emily Coutts is the helmsman...helmswoman...helmsperson.  This is only the third time that a woman has gotten to drive, and that didn't end so well when Deanna got behind the wheel.

Edited January 31, 2017 by starri

[jsbt]

The verbiage for the narration/onscreen text is just dreadful.

[paigow]

On 2017-01-18 at 2:44 PM, Helena Dax said:

Wow, Sarek's going to be there! James Frain is playing him.

So when Nero changed the timeline....Sarek became a slimy smarmy bad guy????

[starri]

Someone leaked a photo of what may or may not be Discovery's Klingons.

Fans reacted about the same way you'd expect fans to react.  At least I haven't read any comments about raped childhoods.

Yet.

[paigow]

The Klingons we need, not the ones we deserve....

[starri]

It's not even that.  I mean, were people's childhoods raped with the TMP Klingons looked nothing like the TOS Klingons?

[legaleagle53]

Why can I not shake the feeling that the purists are going to HATE this show no matter what it does?

[starri]

Just now, legaleagle53 said:

Why can I not shake the feeling that the purists are going to HATE this show no matter what it does?

Because that's exactly what's going to happen.

[legaleagle53]

Agreed.  While I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, I can safely predict that the majority of  those of us who grew up with the original and 50 years of post-original canon are no doubt going to hate, loathe, and despise this show as much as we hated, loathed, and despised Enterprise, and for pretty much the same reason -- it'll be messing way too much with said 50 years of established canon.

If a sixth series had to be done, it should have been set further into the future, say around the 29th Century of the Federation Timefleet. That would be a much better foundation for going back and exploring the original series era; have it that the 29th Century Federation had made it its priority to undo the damage to the timestream that the Romulans did in the movies and restore the original timeline as much as possible.

Edited February 12, 2017 by legaleagle53

[Lebanna]

You know, I remember my mother being upset about The Next Generation destroying a bunch of stuff she loved from TOS, somewhere around 1991 (for us probably season 2, outside the US we were running behind). She got over it - she came to love the show about a year later, probably because season 3 was a vast improvement - and so will most people get over it this time around too, eventually. However this thing turns out.

As a forever fan of the fifth movie, I've even got over all my issues with Enterprise, of which I had so many back then. I pretty much hated it with a passion, and now I kind of love it like a surprisingly sweet red-headed step-child. Because it's still Star Trek, and Star Trek is always home. While I don't know if I'll love this show now, give it fifteen years and I definitely will. So I'm going to do all I can to just get on and love it now, because fifteen years is too damn long.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Lebanna

[starri]

12 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

If a sixth series had to be done, it should have been set further into the future, say around the 29th Century of the Federation Timefleet.

That would have been about the least appealing concept they could have come up with.

Time travel shows are completely illogical.  If someone went into the past to make things worse, people further along in time wouldn't know things have changed.  That's why Legends of Tomorrow, while full of appealing characters, is abjectly stupid.  Also why Enterprise's Temporal Cold War doesn't make any sense if you think about it too long, and why the Xindi arc (as painfully stretched as parts of it were) was so much more satisfying.  The only show that got it right was Quantum Leap, and that's because they based it as Sam going back and fixing things that were already wrong, without having an outside agent be responsible.

I know people could say "but Doctor Who, though."  Time travel is the the McGuffin there, because the point is usually that you SHOULDN'T change history.   Nine times out of ten, the Doctor is randomly showing up some place and fixing a problem that was he was always going to fix, instead of having an antagonist purposefully trying to manipulate events.  When they try and do it the other way, it doesn't work.

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, starri said:

That would have been about the least appealing concept they could have come up with.

Time travel shows are completely illogical.  If someone went into the past to make things worse, people further along in time wouldn't know things have changed. That's why Legends of Tomorrow, while full of appealing characters, is abjectly stupid.  Also why Enterprise's Temporal Cold War doesn't make any sense if you think about it too long, and why the Xindi arc (as painfully stretched as parts of it were) was so much more satisfying. 

Neither the Temporal Cold War nor the Xindi arc made any sense because they messed too much with established canon -- none of the other Treks ever mentioned an invasion by the Xindi as having taken place in the mid-22nd Century, much less the destruction of a large segment of the Earth's population that made the Holocaust pale in comparison or a Temporal Cold War between the 27th/28th Century and the 31st Century that was fought using the 22nd Century as a battleground.  That was the real problem with Enterprise, and it will be the same problem with Discovery.  Canon is canon, and prequels generally tend to destroy canon rather than reinforce it.

No, the only logical way to go would have been to set a sixth series further into the future, in the 25th Century or later.  That way, established canon can remain established canon, and we only have to worry about establishing new future canon.  It's much simpler and safer that way.

Edited February 13, 2017 by legaleagle53

[starri]

17 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

It's much simpler and safer that way.

I don't want safe. Safe gave us Enterprise. 

[benteen]

Not to mention there are enough time travel shows on right now.

[starri]

More casting news.

The biggest name (and surprise, frankly), is Maulik Pancholy.  I guess they were serious when they said "at least one" openly gay actor.

[jsbt]

On 2/12/2017 at 3:07 PM, legaleagle53 said:

Agreed.  While I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, I can safely predict that the majority of  those of us who grew up with the original and 50 years of post-original canon are no doubt going to hate, loathe, and despise this show as much as we hated, loathed, and despised Enterprise, and for pretty much the same reason -- it'll be messing way too much with said 50 years of established canon.

You would be speaking for a lot of us, myself included, who don't agree.

I don't give a shit about the Klingons' heads. And the Cage era doesn't bother me in the slightest. What I would aggressively dislike would be any reference to the pointless Temporal Cold War from ENT, a show I could not be bothered to watch as it aired because the rot in the franchise had set in hardcore. Coto's season is the only half-decent one and that storyline with the time travelers was boring from the pilot on, IMO. There's also nothing to indicate this show is destroying any canon.

Edited February 14, 2017 by jsbt

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, jsbt said:

There's also nothing to indicate this show is destroying any canon.

Not yet, anyway.  Nobody expected Enterprise to destroy canon, either.

[jsbt]

8 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Not yet, anyway.  Nobody expected Enterprise to destroy canon, either.

So based on zero evidence beyond aesthetic tweaks (a la TMP vs. TOS) we should just be preemptive, because... why? Trekkers are supposed to be obsessive and negative? I don't see a need to feed that stereotype.

Honestly, while I'm very unhappy about the Bryan Fuller situation it is still his team. And I'm extremely happy that after almost 20 years straight on TV, Trek is no longer being written, produced and directed by the same 30-40 people. The Berman/Braga syndication house style (and I'm talking aesthetic, dialogue, cutting, music - it all came to feel bland and was in some cases apparently designed to be so) became dated and old hat well before ENT debuted. ENT wasn't bad because it mucked with canon so much, it was bad because it was just bad - the product of tired, bored people who couldn't let even the new talent they hired (many of whom had done or went on to great things outside the franchise) do much coloring outside the same old lines.

So I'm more than willing to give new people plenty of room to work. This is what Star Trek has needed for at least 17 years, if not since 1996.

Edited February 14, 2017 by jsbt

[starri]

7 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Nobody expected Enterprise to destroy canon, either.

What canon did Enterprise destroy?  I don't remember an episode where Picard talked about how the Xindi didn't try and destroy Earth.  The existence of the Xindi contradicts not much.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Also, maybe the canon needs to be destroyed now and then?

[legaleagle53]

2 hours ago, starri said:

What canon did Enterprise destroy?  I don't remember an episode where Picard talked about how the Xindi didn't try and destroy Earth.  The existence of the Xindi contradicts not much.

Exactly.  Neither did Kirk, Sisko, or Janeway.  That's the point.  They didn't talk about it because it never happened -- and I would think they would know the early history of their own Federation.  That's what I meant about destroying canon.  Until Enterprise, canon was that there was no such event in the Federation's history.

Edited February 14, 2017 by legaleagle53

[starri]

No, that's not at all what it means. Since neither Picard, Sisko, nor Janeway said that the Xindi met the Federation with hugs and puppies, it contradicts nothing. By your logic, First Contact also destroys canon because Kirk never said that Zephram Cochrane was the first person to contact the Vulcans. 

I get that we as a group love continuity, but when we take it so deadly seriously, the show stops being fun. 

[benteen]

Quote

The Berman/Braga syndication house style (and I'm talking aesthetic, dialogue, cutting, music - it all came to feel bland and was in some cases apparently designed to be so) became dated and old hat well before ENT debuted. ENT wasn't bad because it mucked with canon so much, it was bad because it was just bad - the product of tired, bored people who couldn't let even the new talent they hired (many of whom had done or went on to great things outside the franchise) do much coloring outside the same old lines.

Not just the style of product but the writing as well.  The month that Enterprise debuted, 24 and Alias also debuted and they were doing stuff you see now on television with recurring storylines and other things while Enterprise clung to being a 26-episode, story of the week TV series.